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Uber Boston: 1936

"The Hindenburg over Boston Common, 1936." Sunday marked the 75th anniversary of the German airship's explosion at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Medium format acetate negative by Leslie Jones. Boston Public Library. View full size.

As a solution to a technical problem, when it became kind of technically feasible, it was already outdated. The Boeing 314 was introduced in 1939, and a number of other flying boats also had the necessary legs (ah, range) by then. The remaining shortcomings (weather forecast, lack of navigational aids) applied to either.

The service was kept up until there were fatalities.

And ve Germans hav to hand it to you Americans, yours were just as big ;-)

According to the blog Airships.net, the 36 passengers aboard the final flight were paying $450 for the experience. In today's money: $7,300. First class passage aboard ocean liners of the day was $150, or $2,430 today.

Of course it WAS a lot faster; 2 days (fastest time was 43 hours, 2 minutes) compared to 5 days for the swiftest ocean liners and up to 10 days for standard crossings.

In 1936, (when I was 10), my father came home from work one day and told me to look up in the sky. Over our Northwest D.C. home (almost to the Maryland State line) floated the Hindenburg - absolutely spectacular. The swastikas didn't mean any thing to me then.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.